Night's Omen

 A typical Saturday night for most people, as far as Raphael could see, consisted of going out and getting drunk, dancing, going home with people that one had never met before, then spending the next morning throwing their guts up into a toilet. There were obvious deviations from the norm, but for the most part, that was what countless years of observation had lead him to believe.

Raphael's Saturday nights were as one could imagine, much different. He'd taken a break from the usual ebb and flow of Midnight to scope some new prospects with Niall's latest progeny, a hunter by the name of Tucker that was utterly scrambled in the brain. Raphael didn't fully understand what power the man had, but Xavier had warned him that he packed a large punch. Fortunately, whoever Tucker had been before, it must have been someone with a wicked sense of humour, because he and Raphael so far got along smashingly well.

Raphael leaned forward, looking down over the rickety fire escape from the alley where he and Tucker had posted up. They were across the street from Hellcat's Hollow, a place that was "neutral" in terms of what they could do based on some stupid archaic set of rules that Raphael didn't care about. Niall didn't care about them, either; since Midnight's attack and Diamond's subsequent intervention, the game had changed, however much nobody wanted to admit it. Raphael was pretty sure he was still on the winning side, too - Diamond may have some heavy hitters, but he was pretty confident that Midnight had more, and they had much fewer reservations about things such as collateral damage.

Which brought his attention back to the Hollow. They were testing the defenses of some of the heavier hitters in town. Ash Leone wasn't necessarily a heavy hitter, but the Hollow housed a few who, put together, made a collectively harder target to nail down. There were Vidas in and out of there (two in particular who were batshit insane as far as Midnight was concerned; one who dabbled in incest while the other had long since been disowned by her family), several connections to the much-larger family of hunters (Battens, Paxtons, Litens... they branched out for miles), and a spattering of mythological creatures that were rare in their own right (he couldn't remember the last time he'd seen a Kirin). All in all, the "neutrality" was one giant fucking cockblock, and Niall wanted to see how much he could agitate them until people stopped using it as a safe haven... and inevitably separated from the herd and could more easily be picked off.

"So, if you want to get them out of the building, I can see how well they handle a little old-fashioned panic," Raphael said to his partner, a grim smile on his face. Raphael didn't dabble in crowd control often, so it was always interesting to see how much he could spread out, and with a largely magical group, it wouldn't be heavy, but it would be chaotic all the same. If only he had a better idea of who was inside the damn building.

Tucker snorted. "Should I just fling a fireball into the side of it?" he joked.

Raphael paused, then raised an eyebrow. "Can you do that?"

Apparently, Tucker had been strange for a lot longer than Raphael thought, since his Saturday night hadn't fit into that pattern for many, many moons, but he'd had Alice to worry about.  When he wasn't working, he was usually at home with her, and even when he took time to be social with other hunters, he tapped out before the irresponsible shit started.  Of course, tapping out before the irresponsible shit started was a hell of a lot more important for someone like him even before he was a father; when you could pretty much level the bar if you got into a situation with someone, or fry a stranger you went home with (all completely accidentally), a bit of care was necessary.  Now, he gave exactly zero fucks, but still didn't go out and 'party'.  For the past few years, which was as far as he could remember (and a lot of it was scrambled and missing), the extent of his partying was when Niall (or Rajz, since he'd been loaned out for quite some time) gave the leash some slack and told him to wreck shit.

Tonight, he'd been 'given' to Raphael and told not to start a war.  That left a lot of wiggle room, and without his more responsible streak keeping him in check, his already 'odd' sense of humor was right in line with Raphael's.  Dangerous, yes, especially since he'd broadened his horizons without those pesky morals to keep his power in check.  He chuckled at Raphael's hesitation and curious question. 

"Xavier didn't tell you nearly enough about me, friend," he informed the vampire with a smirk, making it clear that he was more aware of shit than they thought, though it was partially a bluff; he knew things he shouldn't know because he was damn good, but Niall had him scrambled badly enough that the vampire could, and often did, put him into a nearly robotic state.  He was 'the machine', and whenever Niall thought he was getting his shit together, he scrambled it again to keep him manageable.  He was due for another very soon.

Not one to leave an audience waiting, he snapped his fingers over his other hand to get a few sparks going that flared up into actual flames. Within about thirty seconds, it had built up into an actual fireball, which he tossed almost like one would shoot a hoop in the direction of the building.  Game on.  "Your turn."

 
"Damn, is there something going on in town tonight?" Serena asked her brother - who could have been her god-damned twin - as she slid past him to the far side of the bar to grab another bottle of Rose's lime juice. So many gimlets. So many. Who even fucking drank a gimlet nowadays? "Comin' through, another bottle of lime juice for the old lady drink," she said, kneeing her way past Anthony, who was attempting to restock the beers in the cooler that lined the back of the bar.

"If you think she's old, then I'll have you know I'm practically dust," Aidan said, watching the feline with his ever-vigilant blue eyes. His voice had a slight accent to it, one that had faded to a tolerable level over the thousand plus years he'd been alive, but alcohol always brought it out. It didn't help that he was scarily protective of the lady about whom he spoke, although in this establishment he was able to dial it back some.

"Oh! Wow. Aidan. Hi," Serena said, her smile freezing on her face. "I take it Eva's found something besides the Cosmo to enjoy?" she asked, holding the bottle of lime juice up stupidly.

"Obviously. Look, she's about at her limit. Be a love and see to it that there's no more mojo in them, okay? Thanks." And with a smile that Serena felt looked suspiciously more like a mouth full of bared teeth, he was gone, having left a twenty dollar tip on the bar for her.

"Welp. No more mojo for you, either, mister," she muttered, snatching the twenty and stuffing it down her low-cut shirt before anyone else noticed. They were generally supposed to split tips, but not if she was having to deal with Aidan. Not that she didn't like Aidan. She had to. By proxy. Apparently. But he really needed to work on his social skills, and she'd said as much more than once, only to have Ray make some stupid excuse about him being the clan elder and... she tuned him out after that. At least he wasn't Lucas.

"Sis, you have drunk policemen at the end of the bar asking for more beer," Darren said, waving her over. He held his hand out for the bottle of lime juice, and she handed it off, passing along the message Aidan had left. "Got it, no more good stuff. Oh, Anthony said your boyfriend called and he's got some raid downtown so he's not coming to pick you up. So you have to ride home with me. Sucker," he said, dropping his hands to his crotch and making the 'suck it' motion before turning around on a heel and immediately falling into flirting with a rather gorgeous lioness who, along with a hyena, had been waiting for his attention.

"Right. Duty calls," she sighed, rolling her eyes at Darren's lewd gesture. She'd have grabbed her own crotch and told him to eat her, but they were in public and twincest was sort of rampant those days, someone could get an idea that wasn't true. Ew. Definitely wasn't true. "JOHN, Brandy. Britton. HI. More beers?" she sang, smiling broadly. Internally, she wished that Ray was with them. She hadn't seen him in almost a week. Work. Work. Workworkwork. Fucking cops.

Most of the time, both of the Liten children, now adults, acted like adults.  Most of the time.  Anyone who knew their father wouldn't have been surprised to see them acting like children with each other, since he sure as hell knew how to get his beautiful, graceful wife to explode into giggly laughter and flirting without even trying.  For Darren and Serena to be making lewd jokes at each other and just generally giving each other a hard time (even if they wouldn't joke around quite as hard as they used to around the Hollow after Laura and Lance ruined shit for everyone; this was why they couldn't have nice things) wasn't out of the ordinary at all, even if it wasn't usually a huge deal at work.  Darren worked there full-time between training at the guilds and spending time with Persephone, which Ash had delicately warned him to be careful about, and Serena picked up shifts when Ash needed an extra set of hands. 

It was probably better that the siblings didn't work together regularly, because while they were absolutely efficient together and knew how to run shit when they wanted, they had that habit of getting into shit together, too.  It was still a debate whether they got that from mom or dad, though Darren seemed to get into more trouble than his sister, fortunately.  She'd just gotten herself in with a damned gargoyle, which Darren hadn't even known existed until Ray started hanging out, which brought Aidan in.  Aidan was...definitely interesting.  As with most of the customers, Darren had a knack for dealing with him even when he was at his most testy, which was definitely a skill and probably why Ash kept him on bar like he did, but that wasn't saying the old bastard didn't have a way about him that put people off.  When he wanted, which he did pretty much anytime someone looked at Eva sideways.  Darren had made the mistake of flirting playfully once, and while Aidan had been polite, there'd been something in his voice and eyes that suggested there was absolutely nothing polite about how he'd handle it if he thought the cat was a threat.  Darren had dropped the flirting instantly for just friendly banter, which was easier than one might have thought after that encounter, but mostly because Eva was an absolute delight, and she seemed to bring out the best in Aidan.  Once the perceived threat was gone, the old gargoyle was about as pleasant as it seemed he got.

Maybe that was why he didn't mind taking over with Eva and Aidan when the drunk cops at the end of the bar beckoned for attention from Serena, but he never seemed to mind picking up a tab that was giving one of the girls trouble.  None of the guys batted an eye over it when they were nearby, and Anthony had been known to step in just for a single tab if he thought something wasn't quite okay.  In a place that had a strict policy of neutrality, that was part of the deal, and they'd always presented a very united front in that regard - if you were in the Hollow, you were safe until you made it unsafe for someone else.  Even when Midnight had blown its lid and gone nuts on the city, anyone within the bar hadn't been touched; it'd been people everywhere else that got wrecked, Darren's family included, though his immediate family had been lucky as hell.  Everyone felt safe there.

Maybe that was stupid of them, but they had nothing to suggest otherwise so far.  With just a glance around the room, Darren could have probably pointed out multiple tables in talks simply because it was a safe neutral ground to discuss whatever they needed without worrying about the other side having the upper ground, and that was how it had always been.  Darren flagged Chloe over to grab the drinks for what he assumed was one such table, though he recognized one of the men seated there.

"Chlo, isn't that Heather's friend, Eli?  Who's he talking to?"

"No clue, haven't caught the older guy's name, but he seems kind of familiar, just not, you know what I mean?" she asked, scrunching her face up like she didn't quite understand it, either, but he nodded. 

"Alright.  Keep an eye out, okay?" he asked, knowing that Eli was definitely capable of taking care of himself even if he didn't know what the human was capable of, but Heather was really attached to him, and Darren was her friend.  Whoever the older guy was, it better not be trouble.

That bit of business taken care of for the moment, he turned with a teasing smile to the group of female hunters who'd taken up station on the other end of the bar from the police, instantly jumping into the fray to grab drink refills.  Casey was without Jake for the evening, apparently for the girls' night out they were doing, and she'd definitely had enough that her rich laugh could be heard over the others when Quinn made a comment that he'd missed but apparently cracked her up.  The blonde was standing between Casey and Lily, an arm around the other blonde like they hadn't gone toe to toe like two terminators duking it out not that long ago.  She obviously didn't hold any grudges, even though they'd practically taken each other apart.  Chase and Capri were in a quieter conversation, both taking it a little slower (Chase slowest of all because Darren knew for a fact that her 'gift' liked to surprise her if she drank too much) than the others, and Shannon had shown up between rounds, which meant she needed to catch up asap.  He knew that without her loudly telling him exactly that to be heard over the crowd, but he had her covered.

"Hey, Shannon, inside voice!  I don't think Leone heard you upstairs, you'll get your booze!" Casey shouted back, the irony not lost on her, but she was buzzed up enough that she didn't care and Shannon's response was cut off by their bartender pressing a drink into her hand.  By the time he turned around to nearly bump into Ash apparently getting a feel for the crowd, the ladies had gotten involved in their conversations again, and he had his eyes on other customers.

"Busier than usual for a Thursday," the boss pointed out, and Darren shrugged, grinning. 

"No complaints here."

"Of course not.  Have you seen any of the Vidas?"

"Other than Danielle, no.  Should I?"

"Nope, just asking," he said, and just as simply, Darren moved on with his business and Ash glanced Capricia's way, eyes narrowing slightly in interest.  He turned to someone stepping up to the bar, filling an order and cashing it out like he hadn't noticed anything, but the next drink he made brought him more in her direction to grab at the rums.  What he did was slight and probably got more attention from other people sensitive to auras and magical presences than he liked, but it was Capricia he was ever so carefully paying attention to when he loosened the iron fist of control he had over that other bit of power he possessed, the one that he denied and that forced him to feed harder in every other way, but that he had denied since he'd had the self-control to do so.  He glanced up at her when he practically felt her react, and when Chase set her drink down harder than she probably intended.  She shot him a glance, then pointedly looked away like she felt horribly awkward, but he steeled himself against whatever she'd just gotten and locked eyes with Capricia for an instant, then locked that control back into place like slamming a door.  It was abrupt and jarring, it meant he'd be skimming the crowd's energy the rest of the evening, but he got his answer.

"We need to talk tonight."

After everything that had happened with Bacchus, Capricia needed a fucking break. She'd spent part of her teens drug-addicted, and withdrawal from the ancient vampire's addictive bite was a thousand times worse than the withdrawal she'd gone through after dabbling a year in things like ketamine and heroin. Russia wasn't a very stable place, but she had left that person behind, and now, sixteen something years later, she was thankful she had something to base it on, or else she might have truly believed the pain would never end. Even though the Midnight attack had happened almost six months prior, she was still only just sleeping full nights, and that was with the aid of prescriptions that Batten had given her under the pretense that Connor keep a close eye on her/them.

It was like her life was one constant blow to the ego. Chase had asked her out to the girl's night since they hadn't had one in a while, but Capri suspected there was something else there, as well. True to form, as soon as everyone was drunk enough to converge at the bar, Chase got Capricia to a table and started speaking with her more evenly about what was bothering her, which, as it turned out, was not Bacchus coming back for her. That was a relief, because that was still her most common nightmare, when Andrew wasn't involved anyways.

"I've been seeing some things," she said slowly, trying to figure out how to explain it appropriately. Capricia asked for more specificity, as she knew that she would, and Chase took a swallow of her drink before she answered her, chewing on a piece of ice to buy time. "They're abstract. Which, as you know, my visions usually aren't. I can't tell if it's because it's just a sort of omen about things to come in general, or if there are decisions that are waiting to be made in order for them to become more concrete."

Capricia frowned. "You're sure it's not Bacchus, though? I mean, how can you be absolutely sure, if they're abstract?" she asked, her fingers around her beer, trying to concentrate on how nice and cool the brown glass bottle felt against the sudden heat in her body.

Chase shifted in her chair, glancing up at Capricia. "It just isn't. Have you.. had any contact with Andrew Vida lately?" she asked. She watched Capricia's posture stiffen, and for a brief moment, she was privy to a few flickers of the strange nightmares that Capricia had been having - lots of water, rain or storms or drowning, a pool or shower? It was hard to tell, it was dark, and there was a lot of anger and sadness. It bothered her, actually, more than her own strange visions had. "Capricia... have you been having dreams that aren't about Bacchus?" she pressed.

Capri exhaled slowly. Chase would know if she was lying, unfortunately, and the psychic was probably the best avenue for help that Capri had at the moment. "I haven't talked to him lately. I feel like he's around, though. Sometimes I get the feeling he's close, but there's never anyone there. I wake up some nights and Connor's gone and it's like he was right next to me. It's the medication and the dreams, I know, but...  I think this is all just PTSD creeping into every aspect of my life. I can't catch a fucking break," she said, her voice tired. She was a seasoned hunter and she'd definitely had her share of ass beatings and then some. She was very obviously reaching the end of her career, if things kept up.

Suddenly, like a switch had been flipped, all of that tired, self-loathing, fear, stress, whatever else - it was gone. It was replaced with a warmth that she didn't understand, almost like a euphoric bomb had gone off inside of her. For a second she thought someone had spiked her drink, but she felt a heavy compulsion to turn toward the bar right then. There, like a fucking beacon of light, stood... Ash Leone? Instantly the euphoric feeling she felt hit a brick wall and slid down, giving her the distinct sensation of a hangover as it rested in the form of a painful knot in her shoulders.

Chase set her drink down with a loud sound, but Capricia was focused on the Triste as he pushed away from the bar and came right to her. She glanced at Chase finally, who was giving her a very hard stare, and when she turned back, Ash was literally inches from her face demanding that they talk before the night was up.

"Is this about Andrew?" she asked, confused.

Ash made a terrible face, one that she understood was ill favoured to Andrew, but for different reasons than he'd meant. Of course, of fucking course, he'd just done the Areli litmus test and the first thing she asked about after a little power surge was Andrew. Andrew, who as Chase had been hinting around, was hitting crazy on her psychic richter scale - crazy in the disjointed hard to read ways a schizophrenic was, which meant that he was cracking from lack of Areli attention, and his properly matched siblings finding their zen probably only aggravated it on a level of metaphysical fuckery that even the Vida couldn't comprehend - OR control.

When Ash didn't answer her, she stood up. "Let's go talk right now, then. Are you and Chase about to stage an Andrew Intervention for me? Because, I haven't seen him. I haven't talked to him. He hasn't been around, at all," she said, speaking slowly, emphasizing AT ALL. Of course, what she didn't know was that he'd been around all the god-damned time, but she was so pilled out on her sleeping medication that she didn't know. Connor didn't know either, which was a point in Andrew's survival favour - if Batten knew the hunter had been watching over Capricia in her sleep, he might have had things to say about it, and they might have been swears.

 Serena set a new round on the bar for the off-duty police who had become her friends over the last few months. She didn't understand how she and Darren had fallen in to such powerful friendships - he was spending time with some girl out of Midnight that was effectively the reason he was labeled off-limits, and she was - well, gargoyle. Serena was a trouble-maker, and sometimes not in the endearing way, so how she'd managed to end up on Raymond O'Donnell's radar was a story that constantly changed. The reality of it was that he came in with John and Brandy and there was this bammin' slammin' bootylicious bartender that looked like ten different kinds of trouble and Ray was the type of guy who liked adventure.

He was also the type of guy who liked his job, so Serena was on the other side of the bar. "Sorry honey, I tried. He took the bust in the hopes that someone would run. He won't be gone all night I'm sure," Brandy offered, sipping her Budweiser and trying to avoid her husband's pawing at her necklace, which he was trying to (slightly intoxicated) show Britton.

"See what I got her for her birthday?" John said proudly. He yanked his hand away as he received a sharp slap, and then shrugged. "Any other time I'm grabbing your chest, no problems. Suddenly I want to show off the gem I got you and it's an issue!" he argued.

"Because, dingus, you're gettin' fingerprints all over my diamond," she said matter-of-factly. She looked at Serena, annoyed face fading quickly to one of satisfaction. "He did good, though." She pulled it out of the top of her shirt to show Serena, who leaned in for a better look. "Not bad, huh?"

Serena's eyes practically twinkled from the reflection of the gem. "Damn, John. Cops get paid pretty nice here, huh?" she teased.

"Hey," he said, beer in hand. "I may hate my family, but I do not hate their money. They want to keep sending us checks, eventually Brandy might start putting them in Sammy's college fund."

Britton finally piped in, having finished what was left of his rum and coke, and spoke as he reached for the new drink: "And Brandy's gift fund."

Eli, as a general rule, noticed quite a bit.  Oftentimes, his survival depended on it, and his gift meant that he noticed more than just the physical world around them.  That being said, he was still ridiculously oblivious as to the employees that the Hollow and their interest in who he was talking to.  It wasn't because Chloe was a ninja and completely subtle, though she did well enough, but mostly because he saw no reason that they would give a shit about what he was doing or who he was talking to.  What was the big deal?

He smiled at Chloe when she brought them their drinks, thanking her and taking a sip as he let her know they didn't need anything else, then turned back to his companion.  "So you're telling me that's your son?  Pretty boy, lots of swagger?"

"Fraid so.  As much as I hate to admit it, my surveillance came back to confirm it."

"Damn.  I was really looking forward to killing that bastard," Eli remarked mildly, glancing off to the man's side thoughtfully, then sighing into his drink.  "So let me guess, we need to save him instead of killing him?"

"If we have to kill him, we kill him, but you'd be guessing right that I'd rather not."  Eli nodded, seeming to think it all over, and the older man leaned back in his chair.  "You know you don't have to help me with this.  You've done plenty for me over the years."

"Nonsense, you know I'll do whatever."

"Eli--"

"Tim, no," he snapped, putting down his drink and shifting in his seat to lean forward.  "You saved my ass, taught me the shit I needed to stay a step ahead, and if I can cover the areas you can't, I'll do it.  If you say Trevor's still in there and we can save him, I'll do whatever I can.  If he's half the man you are, I won't regret it."

Tim Browning nodded, the small smile strained, but still somewhat proud.  "He's a good boy, and a good soldier."

Another nod.  "Then we fix this and lock that psycho possessing him back downstairs."  Eli considered over his drink again, then looked to his companion.  "I know you were never much one for the guilds, but there are a few people there I think you'd appreciate, and they'd be helpful.  You game?"

"I think we're going to need all the help we can get on this one, between the Devil and monsters from the deep or whatever the hell they are.  I'm game."

"Good, cause I agree.  One misstep and we're a stain on the wall with that one.  Drink up."

Chase didn't get involved in the 'Girls Night' scene as often as she liked, considering she was friends with so many of the women she worked with, and they all seemed to manage getting schedules to line up in different bunches.  Audrey, Sitara, Skye and Raven would be going out another night this week, which Chase would be missing, but time with Capri was more important at the moment.  It had been for the last six months, and Chase had tried like hell to be there both for Connor and for Capri in different ways, but she'd admit to being selfish some of the time in dealing with her own issues; everyone had suffered that night, herself included, and it was remembering that she needed to take care of herself as well that Jonathan had been stressing.  Now, she wasn't so sure that she should have listened to him, since she should have been paying more attention to all of this.

Then, of course, there was Ash.  He and Chase were usually very close to the same wavelength, if only because her precognition allowed her to keep up with what he was doing, making his moves seem less unusual or mysterious.  To her, he was very straightforward, but she knew what he was doing.  That didn't mean he couldn't surprise her ever, which he was proving right then, but she blinked back way more information than she thought she wanted from him with an awkward glance to the side (he was hot, whatever Capri thought), and cleared her throat like it would help clear her mind.  There was more going on here than she'd originally thought, though Ash's reaction suggested that Andrew was part of the problem.

"I'm...not so sure about that," she offered up at Capri saying Andrew hadn't been around, but it wasn't a solid image, either.  It was fuzzy, shrouded in darkness and ever-changing, but she definitely got the impression of a lingering figure.  She'd be warning Connor, that was for certain, and letting him know he should be spending more nights at home with Capri and Anya.  His job had been more hectic than usual the past six months, and the time he'd taken to work through everything with Capri in the midst of it had made it harder, but this was a serious issue.  Then, of course, she wondered just how dangerous Andrew would be, even to her brother.

Ash could potentially shed some light on that, and though he hadn't been intending to take her off the floor right at that moment for their talk, he pursed his lips, straightened to look out over the restaurant and spread out his aura beyond.  Safe.  He could head to the back to deal with this for the time being.  "Come with me."  Naturally, Chase followed with a shout to the others that they'd be back.

The problem Ash was quickly approaching would be how he was so in-the-loop about the Arelis, because even if he gave Capri his typical dismissive 'I know things' response, Chase had seen something that would make her question that.  There was nothing for it, but he could feel the curiosity out of her.  He'd deal with it later.

In his office, he gestured they take a seat while he dropped into the chair behind his desk, running a hand through his hair.  He hated Arelis, and he already had to deal with Laura and Lance, who were fast making him wonder if they weren't a lost cause.  "Have you ever heard of the Areli line of witches?"

At the negative response from both of them, he nodded, not surprised.  "They were a powerful line that built their power through sexual contact much like a succubus, but unlike their more common counterparts, feeding from another of their kind didn't weaken both, but raised more power.  Since they were born in sets of twins, they nearly always had another Areli at their side, and they were known for incest and tearing through non-related partners for their own gain.  The other witch lines and hunter families banded together in the 18th century to wipe them out, and mostly succeeded.  Three survived and went into hiding."

Naturally, he had no intention of explaining his own part in this, but he didn't mind bringing Ramsey and Cerise into it, assholes that they were.  "Together, the surviving set of twins raised enough power to be essentially immortal, and they've been...busy.  I've recently confirmed a modern pair of Areli twins, Andrew Vida's younger siblings.  If Andrew is also Areli, and without his twin, then his siblings realizing their...'potential' is probably forcing him to seek out a suitable replacement, and there is nothing reasonable or rational about an Areli's needs."

Layman's terms?  Andrew was dangerous, which Chase was already picking up on without understanding the nature of his madness.

 The funny part was, if Danielle had half an idea of what was going on with Andrew, she'd have been telling them to put on the brakes at top volume while lighting flares and beacons and everything else she could think of. He was a pretty fuckin' powerful Vida, and that came from a place of pride for her to say that, but she didn't meet too many people that she had to effectively use Ash as a shield for, and he was one of them. He just had a far better handle on his abilities than she did, and while she was pretty damn effective, Andrew was the goddamn Jason Bourne of Vidas at the moment. His brother and sister might have been headed that way, too, until they decided to hey-diddle-diddle and fiddle eachother, which activated their wondertwin Areli powers forever.

It hadn't really occurred to her that Andrew would be anywhere near that, but if she knew that he'd had a twin that his mother had lost in utero resulting in only one Andrew and not an Andrew and 'Girl-Andrew' being born, she could have told them right then that that would fuck a Witch up. Not a Vida Witch, but ANY Witch. They were all sort of stupidly connected somehow, Children of Macht and whatnot - Danielle's brother had died when she was old enough to understand it and it had permanently fucked her up. If they had been twins, if he had died while they were still together in the womb? Hell no, Danielle would be a basket case.

Of course, Ash probably knew all of that, even if he didn't know Andrew as well as he knew Danielle. But none of them, NONE of them could predict HOW fucked up he was, or how far he was willing to go. If Danielle knew about the water shit she'd have flat out told Capricia she bet he'd try to drown her in her fucking pool. They all wanted to believe abstract, emotive shit? Not even a little - Danielle was blunt, so was Andrew. Nope, he'd drown that bitch, she'd put money on it.

Of course, that was none of her business tho. [kermit.jpg]

What WAS her business, or rather, what she was about to MAKE her business, was who the FUCK Eli was talking to. No shame, she walked right up to the table like she owned the place (because she sort of did... sort of). "Who's your friend?" she asked; and while she was smiling, the three of them knew that she was much more interested in that answer being obtained than how polite she'd need to be to get it. Of course, she looked identical to Celeste when Celeste was her age, so between Tim and Eli's ability to project, dream weave, whatever the fuck he did (she didn't really know), they'd both recognize her at least a little from a time before this present time.

"Reasonable or rational?" Capri parroted. "Like, what, do you mean exactly?" She wanted details, of course, because being ill-informed was how she always ended up in the forking hospital. To be fair, it wouldn't have helped with Bacchus, or with King... well, with a lot of the stuff, actually, was just shit that happened involving people she already knew about, she just didn't know they knew about her... but Andrew DID know about her. A lot about her, actually.

"And why would he even waste his time with me? If he's an Arceli or whatever you called them, wouldn't he be trying to find another one of those? You said three survived, who's the third one? Or can he not just get it on with his sister? Man, I really just asked about my friend getting it on with his own sister, and I'm not even a little bothered... this fucking job..." she muttered, shaking her head. She blinked her brown eyes rapidly, focusing back on Ash.

"My point is, I'm the last person he'd give a shit about. I'm a human. Even as a Vida he always said he wouldn't date a human, so this new thing probably makes that even less likely." And yes, date was replaceable with other words, but the bottom line was, Andrew had never outsourced his mating habits to humans, not seriously anyways. That was always the big thing between them, the reason they both 'accepted' nothing would ever happen. So if that was off the table, then it was news to her.

If Danielle knew any of what was being discussed here, she'd have had plenty to say on it, but alas, she was too busy sticking her nose into Eli's business and therefore missing the juicy shit going on with Ash and Capricia.  Sucks.  Actually, Ash would be fine without Danielle hearing any of this, since he knew all that she did about Andrew, plus some because he'd been around since they were all born.  He'd heard about the twin that was never born, and he'd been very concerned then.  Now, it was obvious he'd had plenty of reason to be.

He also wasn't willing to bet on the emotive shit, either, but that might have been Danielle's influence - if it had been her, Ash knew she'd drown them.  He was betting on Chase warning Connor, as well, which he wasn't sure was a good or bad idea at this point in the game.  Having the guild leader forewarned would help his chances of survival and not being taken off-guard, but if he was watching for something, he was more likely to either provoke or find himself reacting to a bad situation.  It may have been lose-lose with someone like Andrew.

"I mean that he may try to get what he wants or kill you trying," he said bluntly, because she needed to know the risks.  "It's possible he'll kill anyone that he thinks is standing in his way, as well, whether they are or he just thinks they're an obstacle.  You have Areli blood.  It doesn't seem to be enough to do anything extreme for it, so it's a very latent thing, but you have it.  He could try with his sister, Arelis can all raise power with each other, but Laura and Lance are very close, and from what I've heard, Andrew is a little....estranged there."

Did he gloss over who the third was?  Yep.  Not her business unless he absolutely had to, though Chase was looking at him very carefully, and even with his mental shields up all the way, he got the feeling she was gleaning more from her ability than he'd have liked.  She was another that was dangerous, so it was good that she was typically a 'good' person.  As good as someone who kills for a living can be, anyway.

"You have just enough Areli blood to respond to that magic, Capricia."

Eli knew enough about the Hollow to have an idea of who Danielle was when she walked up, mostly because of Heather and other hunters using this as a meeting place.  He wasn't technically a hunter (government work and freelancing kept him busy), but his ability meant that he got dragged into the weird shit more often than he didn't.  Thus why he was talking to Tim, and how he'd even met him.  he gave Danielle a look that wasn't even trying not to look irritated at the interruption, his eyebrows perked up like he expected her to explain why it was her business while his mouth and nose managed to scrunch just right to suggest he didn't actually care.  If it wasn't for the way Tim's expression changed, he might have tested that supernatural aura of hers just to see what made it tweak.

Tim was looking at her like he knew her very well, and while he wasn't absolutely certain instantly, he had a damn good idea.  It had been years since he'd seen her, since he'd seen her mother, but he would bet on it.  "You're Celeste's girl, aren't you?  You look just like her," he told her, leaning back in his seat and downing some of his beer.  God, he missed the old days sometimes. 

Eli glanced back at Tim, wondering not for the first time exactly what kind of shit the man had been into and who he knew, but he'd probably be finding out.  "This is Tim Browning, Trevor's father."

He didn't necessarily know that Danielle and Trevor had been training together or that she knew him all that well, but he was aware that the guy had spent time in the Hollow, so there was a good chance that the owner's girlfriend knew who he was.  Since apparently, everyone here knew everyone, he wasn't going to assume they didn't anymore.

 Oh, Danielle knew exactly how many fucks Eli gave about who she was or why she was there, just that she was interrupting his conversation. That only made her smile more brightly at him as Tim identified her as Celeste's daughter, and the grin turned downright shit-eating when Eli broke down and introduced him. Danielle, clever Witch she was, intended to skim off the guy and try to get a read of him - she wasn't psychic like Luke, but she could get into people's heads, and if she wanted to do a quick, brief history, that wasn't super-hard.

"I am, actually, and thank you for saying so. Age hasn't much touched her, so I'm sure she's just how you remember her," Danielle offered. She was trying to place him, where was he in her life? She hadn't spent much time with her mother until she was about ten or so - there was a period after her father's death that they'd gone to live with a Smoke friend while Celeste handled whatever she'd needed to handle. Danielle still didn't know a lot of it, and that was probably good. She wouldn't really know how Celeste made Thanatos back down, but she had a good imagination, and none of it was shit she wanted to imagine. People said Danielle had broken the mold when it came to her lack of reverence for life, but she'd gotten it from somewhere, hadn't she?

The problem was that while she was Celeste's daughter, Tim was - obviously someone who was familiar with her mother, enough that when she went in for a quick grab and go, she was met with a mental barrier that normal humans didn't have. Her smile didn't falter at all, though, to her credit. "Interesting," she said, her tone almost cheerful, and either they knew why or they didn't. "Trevor's dad, huh? He and his brother come by here often; I've been beating Trevor into shape. He's a capable hunter, but humans don't know all the tricks they'd like to think they do."

She politely didn't mention that he was fucking possessed by the goddamn devil, because they were all working on that, right?

"Does my mother know you're in town, or should I give her a call?"

Yeeeaaaaaaaaah, dig that info out, girl.

As many adoring eyes as were on little Aoife, the only ones that truly mattered were Aidan's. He came back from whatever he'd been doing at the other end of the bar, nestling up closely to her. She smiled, wordless, enjoying the warmth he provided her. The Chime may have been old by the standards of some of the creatures in the room, but she was a mere child by Elemental terms, and even Aidan pre-dated her. Nobody really knew how he'd found her, just that he wasn't keen on letting her go.

"My drink tastes different," she said, running her full lower lip along the rim of the glass to collect the sugar that lay along it. "It doesn't taste as harsh as the others."

"That's because you're getting used to them, love," the gargoyle told his smaller counterpart, dropping a kiss on her messy, white-blonde hair. He lied to her often, but honestly, she was so damned gullible at times that he felt it was for her own good, and she certainly would not understand why he was cutting her off so early in the evening when in truth, she'd had more mojo right then in her system then she'd ever had before. She would think he was being 'mean', and he knew exactly how dangerous it was for her to be the very thing that she was, at the age she was, in the world she was.

"Oh!" she said, laughing at herself. "How silly of me!" Her cheeks already had a rosy hue from the pre-existing intoxication, and she raised her glass, and her eyebrows at the same time, brown eyes meeting his blue ones in approval at how sweet the drink tasted. She liked when she got used to things, they always tasted so much better. She set the empty martini glass down on the bar, licking the sticky lime juice off of her lips with a brush of her tongue, and had just reached up with her short, glittery golden nails to take Aidan by his scruffy chin and kiss him when a loud banging sound completely flooded her senses.

It wasn't just a banging sound, it was panic, chaos, terror, darkness...  She may have been alive a long time, but she was instantly afraid, and her mouth dropped open in shock as she grabbed the sleeve of Aidan's leather jacket so that she didn't lose him. It sounded like an explosion, but she didn't know what, or why. He was telling her things, and she was nodding - yeah, he'd let her have way more than she was good with on the mojo, he knew that now by her glazed stare - and then he finally just put his arm around her and yanked. She followed him because she had to, because he was bigger than she was and much stronger, but also because she was scared and she didn't know what else to do.

Once outside, his moment of protective mode gave way into blind, unadulteated rage. He still had his arm draped around her shoulders, but as soon as the crowd moved away from the building (which apparently had a goddamn bomb go off in it), he began scanning the people a lot harder than normal. He just wanted someone to give him a fucking reason. Just one.

Aoife didn't even bother to ask what was going on, because he wouldn't have answered her if she had. Instead, she reached out to Serena, who had a bloody cut on her forehead from where a bottle of vodka had broken free of the shelf during the quake of the building and cracked her in the head. Aidan only then let her go, and only so she could hug the other female (who happened to be the mate of one of his own clan, so he couldn't NOT allow Aoife to comfort her).

"I don't know what happened," Serena said, one hand to her head. She was crying, mascara was making its way down her face, and she was upsetting Aoife, who was looking over her shoulder at Aidan with an expression that plainly fucking said, YOU'RE THE ONE IN CHARGE, DO SOMETHING.

Eli rolled his eyes as his conversation with Tim essentially became Danielle's conversation with Tim, but he also leaned back where he was sitting and settled in with his drink to watch, which actually ended up being more interesting than he expected.  Witches and their powers weren't exactly his forte, but he understood what he was seeing when she reached out with whatever her abilities were and got shut down by Tim's mental defenses.  The older man was good. 

Tim, for what it was worth, just smiled a slight bit more when he felt her push and back off, the irony of her mother having been the one to work on his mental defenses with him not lost on him.  It would just have to remain a funny little joke just for him, though he'd worked on it quite a bit after he and Celeste parted ways.  She would probably be just a little impressed to see the progress, but he'd always been tenacious.  That was the least of it.

"You're welcome," he told her, not really caring to give her much to place him with, but he was sure as hell taking in the information she was dropping.  Trev's brother?  Colton was in college on the other side of the country, so that wasn't who she was talking about, so who?  The only answer Tim could think of was Tyler, the kid Chris had when she cheated on him and took off on them all, which did irritate him slightly, but it was an old enough wound that he let it pass for the time being.  He'd deal with that shit later.  It was Danielle 'beating Trevor into shape' that caught his interest, more because he wondered if she knew.  Obviously not, or he figured she'd have reacted more, which made her comment about 'tricks' all the more amusing.

"Yeah, well, we're even, cause you witches don't know all the tricks you'd like to think you do, either.  Go on, call your Mom.  I called Eli when I hit town to get a feel for the situation, and you'd save me from one of my calls."  He had enough to make as it was, and he wasn't even sure how many on his list were still hunting.  Celeste, Victor, Zane, Leo, Stavros, Axel...

Then came the explosion, and stupid games with a little witch were the least of all of their problems.  Eli stood up so fast that his chair flipped backwards behind him, shouting to Tim before the fireball even hit, but it was magical, and it hit his radar even without being able to literally see it.  It might have saved their lives, since they were much closer than the people at the bar, and some of them still got knocked around.  Darren shouted for Ash as soon as he could make his feet, dragging Anthony up so that they could both climb over the bar, but it was unnecessary.  The triste was dashing past all of the rest of them before any of them knew it, and Tim got back up with a curse.

"It came from outside, these people need to stay in," Eli muttered to his friend, and Tim nodded. 

"How capable is the owner?"

"Capable."

"Then he's gonna need some crowd control."

Ash was capable, alright, but he was still about to deal with what was essentially a terrorist attack on his bar on a busy night.  He shot through the crowd even as he heard Darren shouting for him, but the leopard and his wolves were already on the move, gestures to direct them where to check all that he needed.  He made eye contact with Eli and then the man alongside him, and Eli twirled his finger in the air, which Ash took to mean that the people needed to be rounded up.  Acceptable.  With a nod, Ash was out the doors with his shifters in tow.

Outside, Aidan, Serena and Aoife were already on site, along with plenty of others, which Ash really didn't have time to deal with.  He was instantly scanning the area for a source, reaching out hard with everything he had, and he was just touching on something strong when Aidan grabbed him by the arm and whipped him around.  Darren, Anthony and Dave were taking to the edges of the people gathered to make a perimeter that would allow them to figure out where the threat was coming from and try to get people back inside, but Ash could feel their attention all zero back in with a rush of the kind of energy that shifters all used.  Aidan was pissed, which Ash understood, but they didn't need this.  He put his free arm up to gesture his people back, irritated to have lost his grasp on that force, but Aidan's fanged face and inhuman eyes staring at him from mere inches away was a bit more important right then.

"This is not helping anyone, Aidan.  Let me go," he told the other, voice calm despite the panic surrounding him.  He could feel it like it was an external voice, everyone around him keyed up and ready to either fight or bolt, his shifters itching to shed their human forms, those that were trained in bad situations on edge and those that weren't scared and teary.  It was insanity. 

"You call this safe, Leone?"

"I can't protect against it if you won't let me," he pointed out, already yanking at the gargoyle's auras as much as he was able to, trying to pull the rage out and throw some of his own calm in, but it was setting him off-balance.  That was how much anger a gargoyle could pump out.  That Ash was also trying to even out the crowd wasn't helping, and Aidan was seriously only a small step away from trying to yank his arm off.  "Take the women back inside, it's safer there.  We'll handle it out here."

He wouldn't dare suggest Aidan leaving Aoife somewhere, even if it would be a huge help to have the gargoyle actively trying to help them, because he figured the bastard would really snap at the suggestion.  He yanked on his arm, and Aidan released it, but he got the feeling it wasn't over.  Unfortunately, turning away from the pissed off ancient, he threw his power out over the crowd harder and didn't feel that presence any longer. 

"Merde!" he cursed, the French and the foul language the best gauge as to how pissed he was, but he kept pushing his influence over the crowd, trying to counteract the panic and fear.  Calm, he breathed, it would be taken care of.

 Aidan being angry wasn't going to change anything, but it did help Raphael a little - the ancient gargoyle managed to make himself enough of a distraction that Ash lost what concentration he'd been making to find where the source of the panic in the crowd was coming from. Raphael took a moment to try and zero in on people who individually had issues with the situation at hand, and lucked out - hate to say it, but most of them lived in New York in 2001, and most of them had a distinct fear reserved specifically for shit hitting buildings.

Raphael pinpointed that, especially on some of the humans, and had them putting out enough aural dissention that the Triste would have his hands full for a few fucking hours trying to fix that. Huehuehue. Raphael was such a fucking troll. He grinned a little as Tucker watched him work, happy for once that someone he'd been paired with was every bit as asshole and was willing to sink to his level of fun.

"Do the cat, do the cat!" Tucker said, pointing down at the female that huddled close to the gargoyle and the - the fucking Elemental.

"I don't know if that's a good idea, man," Raphael hesitated. "I can piss off Leone all day long, but the gargoyles we sort of don't fuck with."

"You don't, you mean," Tucker corrected him. He was fairly certain that fire beat fucking rock any day of the week. "But, I mean, if you're too scared..."

"Oh, fuck you, Tucker," Raphael spat. With that he turned back to the cat and concentrated. He didn't even bother trying to delve into her mind, she was so scared already her protective barriers wouldn't have mattered - her fears were bubbling to the surface. Something about her gargoyle boyfriend (what the fuck was it with these rockheads lately, did they have nothing better to do than creep on NYC?) being deployed, being hurt in the line of duty (he seemed like real life COD based on her mental images of him) and of course, of her dying in some terribly tragic and ultra-normal way because that would mean that life wasn't magical or some shit. He didn't get that part much.

But just because he didn't understand the last fear didn't mean he couldn't capitalize on it, and he absolutely did as much. Serena practically crumbled in Aoife's arms, suddenly unable to breathe and pretty much ready to piss herself in the wild revelation that this was a coordinated terrorist attack and that Ray was dead.

"Aidan!" Aoife said, finally shouting at her lover to fucking do something instead of stalking around angrily. It wasn't often that the Chime was angry, or yelled, but when she was pressed to do both, it generally yielded results favourable to her.

"Ah, shit," Raphael snapped. He saw the gargoyle turn and cast a glance up to where they were."Got that fire ready there, broseph? Because I think we're about to need it."

"Leone's got some oomph," he remarked, glancing at the vampire that was essentially getting into a battle of wills with the triste over whether the crowd was going to be calm or insane, which Raphael would inevitably win because nobody would leave the blonde alone long enough for him to really do much of anything.  If it was up to him, Ash would continue to get distracted, though the gargoyle leaving him alone was unfortunate, especially when Raphael's new tactics (which Tucker had oh so skillfully goaded him into) put the gargoyle's attention in their direction.  New game, fuck with the triste, and preferably get the gargoyle off their backs.  "Fire in a minute.  You get your ass kicked before I get back and I'm telling everyone." 

Or at least, he would until he got his brain fried again, which was probably coming soon, anyway.

The question was where exactly he wanted to take pot shots, since he could target the witch himself, but that would likely get his attention again, and he'd managed to shake him.  Yes, he'd felt the man reaching for him, trying to source him out, and the gargoyle had given him the chance he needed to lose that bit of contact.  Now, it was all about the sneaky.

He dropped down off of the roof they were on, slowed his landing with a small burst of power and landed softly in the alley beside it.  Pulling his hood up over his head, he slipped out into the crowd, mingling and ever so casually touching bits of debris or brushing against the clothing of someone he passed, including the gargoyle's handler or whatever she was.  It was catching the eye of a blonde woman in the crowd that caused him to hesitate ever so slightly, though he wasn't sure why except that she looked right at him.  Who was she?  Why did he care if she looked?  A split second of eye contact that seemed to last minutes later, he turned his head and kept moving, picking up his pace as he heard movement in his direction.

As soon as he neared the edge of the crowd, he set off all of his little flashes, which would sting like a frozen paintball might, but had a loud crack and a bright flash.  They were more for distraction, something to add to the chaos, take the gargoyle's attention and keep Leone on his toes, but maybe they'd also help him lose the blonde woman now. 

If not, he was setting shit on fire.

 Lily had had a slight difficulty in her station at Onyx after what had transpired. They'd even allowed specialists with Diamond to look into her behaviour to see if there were any more cause for concern, and she'd essentially been given a clean bill of health - mentally speaking, anyways. Her counterpart to the equation, Quinn, seemed to have no issue with the matter, having been wiped immediately following the fight on Grayson's orders because he absolutely couldn't risk dolls just running fucking amok trying to take eachother out, and the last thing he needed was any residual aggression there that would make her target Lily unfairly.

Most of the damage was not so much forgotten about as it was unspoken about, and Lily had passed her probationary period and was given back her level 5 status after five months of waiting. The new and improved Lucien wagered that he was fucking himself over not putting her out there, regardless of her indiscretions (or how willing she had been to them), and had essentially told Zaine that he didn't want to hear any more on the matter. That hadn't deterred the mamba who had an unnatural attachment to Lily to take his anger out on her, though.

Of course, it never even occurred to Lily just how damaged Zaine was over the entire ordeal, when it had been that jealous, manipulative asshole who had drawn her back into hunting in the first place. Had he not shown up at she and Alice's apartment one night essentially begging her to come back, using all the right words, things that a struggling, emotionally needy single mother needed to hear, she would never have popped her cork because Niall probably never would have had the opportunity to use her. It was Zaine's fault, and he knew it, but only he and Lily were the only ones who knew what he said to her that night (or ever), and for some reason, she wasn't talking. She refused to even bring him up when she had mandatory one-on-one sessions with Indrani, which didn't escape the beautiful psychologist and certainly didn't go unsaid to her rather vigilant husband (who was now Lucien's right hand while Zaine enjoyed his cooling off period).

Nobody but Zaine and Lily knew why he hated her so much, and even Lily didn't fully comprehend it. It was a love that had grown so ugly and full of jealousy that it had twisted and turned to hate. Zaine had much in common with several of Midnight's vampires, a thing that did not go unnoticed by Lucien either, though he, even as the better, faster, harder, more violent version, couldn't entirely fault his brother (they may as well be, anyways). Lucien only assured Dev that it was a Serpiente thing, and to leave it alone. Dev would comply, or he would until the moment became crucial that he couldn't, and at that point Lucien probably would have gone along with it.

That being said, when all of the magical fuckery started, Lily was about as clueless as everyone else was, and quickly rushed outside. She ignored Ash trying to get everyone back in, Quinn at her side, and looked at her taller companion. "Midnight again?" she asked, blue eyes confused.

"They would never," Quinn said, even though there was hesitancy in her voice. She knew the problem that 'always' and 'never' brought when war was in question. "It would be too reckless."

"Let's try and at least help Ash, then," Lily suggested - right around the time that Tucker decided to try and sneak by. It was like everything had gone into slow motion and they locked eyes; Lily stunned, disbelieving as Tucker emulated something like Luigi from Mario Kart. The fucking Jubilee-esque bursts started and Lily moved just before being popped in the arm by something that felt like a firecracker. "Stay here!" she told Quinn, and pivoted on her foot to run after the figure.

"TUCKER!" she screamed, knifing through the growing crowd. She was having a hard time, especially when Ash started employing others to try and force people back in. Someone grabbed her by the arm and whipped her around. "Let me go!" she shouted. "I saw Tucker, I have to go!" She was near-frenzy as she shouted, yanking back. Had it been someone of Ash's that grabbed her, they probably would have let her go.

But it wasn't.

"Tucker's dead, Lily. You can't use him to try and cover your ass on this one," Zaine snarled. "Niall twist that screw in your brain again, huh?"

"No, ZAINE, no! It was Tucker! It was David, I saw him! Please, I'll show you, you have to let me go, I WILL SHOW YOU I SWEAR - " Lily was tugging back, hard, to the point where it looked almost comical and she actually dragged him a few feet before he actually used more than about 20% to hold her in place. He wasn't trying to hurt her, just detain her, but she was so frantic, so obviously lying, trying to save her own skin so badly that she'd just say whatever she thought would work...

He grabbed her by the throat, which surprised the shit out of her by the look in her eyes. "You're a lying bitch, Lilyana. That's all. I bet after this, Lucien won't protect you anymore. I'd be doing him a favour," he said softly, his voice taking on that rich, gravelly tone it had when he spoke low.

Raphael getting his ass kicked before Tucker returned was a distinct possibility with Serena collapsing into Aoife's arms, Darren off with Anthony, Dave and the rest of Ash's tougher employees trying to maintain a perimeter and Aoife shouting at him to do something.  What he wanted to do was smash Ash in the mouth because this was his place and it was supposed to be safe, but there was still some sort of rational thought that understood that part of what made the Hollow safe was that there were powerful individuals that frequented it.  Leone had made the building as inherently safe as he could without leveling it and rebuilding (which was partially going to be happening now), and he was working the crowd to counter the supernatural aura of fear that was hitting all of them. 

Aidan could feel it in a distant way, but was unaffected because of a gargoyle's born ability to be essentially a metaphysical rock when it came to trying to affect them.  They were magical themselves, but foreign magic took more effort to do anything for them than most people were willing to expend, including healing.  That was a distinct problem sometimes, but not one Aidan typically concerned himself with.  If he was so badly injured that his own healing couldn't handle it, then the fates had finally decided to reunite him with the rest of his clan, and he would accept their decision, but until then?  He was going to wreck shit if he got his hands on whoever was causing this.

Ash caught the glare from the gargoyle, and if he didn't already know how retardedly difficult it would be, he'd have tried zapping him for energy, since Aidan had plenty of it to spare.  The problem was that all the ancient was offering was anger, and that wouldn't help him spread calm.  His own people already had their instructions to try to keep the crowd within the Hollow's perimeter, which was more difficult than it sounded when everyone wanted to be outside the building and he didn't have nearly enough employees for the number of people on site, but the hunters who'd been at the bar stepped up, joining his people at the perimeter and trying to get people back within his firestone barrier.  It wasn't going to keep them safe with a guarantee, but the effects of the crowd control his opponent was working wouldn't reach through his firestone.  They needed to get everyone back inside.

"Crimson has support incoming."  Chase slipped past him, dropping a hand on his shoulder ever so briefly and whispering in his ear to ensure that he heard her, then was gone herself to help usher people back to safety with the knowledge that he'd offered her about the firestone - she may have more than he'd bargained for, as was her ability, but he was confident that she would pass along the information.  That she'd contacted her brother for help was not unwanted, either.

Speaking of help that he appreciated, Aidan seemed to have finally found himself a constructive way of helping when Aoife yelled at him, and Ash was pleased to see the gargoyle focus his attention toward a building, somewhere physical and solid where they could both coordinate their attacks.  Ash focused harder with his power on that spot, pressing back against the fear with a calm stillness that would have made the falcons stop to glance his way, and Aidan started moving in that direction.  He didn't go entirely scary right in the middle of the crowd, but his speed picked up as he moved and nobody dared stop his progress as he broke the perimeter.  By the time he made it to the building he'd decided upon, he had the claws he needed to start climbing.  Look out, Raphael.

He heard the woman who'd made eye contact with him shout his name, a curious thing that made him unsure whether he wanted to stop and stare at her like she'd grown a second head or keep moving - it didn't much matter, since guild reinforcements were apparently incoming, Zaine leading the charge simply because he was closest when the calls started going out.  Since Midnight had attacked, their communications had gotten much faster, more secure and just generally more efficient, which could be attributed to ISIS, and more specifically to Jason Murphy, who'd been 'convinced' to spend the night of the attack and the days following it playing cat and mouse with Midnight's hacker vampire.  He'd gone ahead and set up a system that was so roundabout, had so many redirections and basically came across to other computer people as a ball of tangled up strings that it would make someone crazy to try to intercept their lines.  It didn't make it impossible, but very, very difficult, and Jason was on hand more often than he might have liked, updating and changing up the system to keep it from being learned.

They'd all received new work cells, and once the call had come through from Chase, not to mention the others who'd put in the call for backup as the shit in the fan, Jason had put out a call for nearby hunters to get their asses over there.  In essence, it was his fault that Zaine was on site as quickly as he was, but it also meant that when Connor handpicked his people to show up with him, they were all already aware of an issue and en route.  The guild leader and Stavros arrived within perhaps a minute of each other, the trainer having brought Sean along with him, and both of Crimson's Level 5 snipers were taking rooftops with a partner who was ordered to do nothing more than watch their backs while they worked.

Tucker, having paused over the blonde woman shouting his name and watching her get manhandled by one of Onyx's trainers, glanced around to notice the rest of the situation changing, and if he'd had any unexpected urges to help Lily or attack Zaine, he brushed them aside in favor of getting his ass out of there.  He bolted, using the chaos of his charges to get past the perimeter they'd built and which would soon be impossible to escape, and then had to consider whether he helped Raphael deal with the gargoyle or saved his own hide.  Both were so tempting, I know.

Honestly, he was banking on Raphael making the selfish move to save himself, since vampires had that fancy ability to teleport themselves away from harm.  It was irritating sometimes, but he really didn't expect his partner this evening to wait around if it meant he had to go toe to toe with a gargoyle, especially with how reluctant he'd been to mess with one to begin with.  Thus, the planeswalker tossed another, smaller and harder to source out, fireball at the building just above where Aidan was climbing and stepped backward into a portal he created for his escape.  He'd regroup with Raphael back in Midnight.

 Zaine was in for a hell of a surprise; when Lily lost site of Tucker, she also lost her rationale - the rationale that she could preserve her own life by calming down. She kicked out and connected with Zaine right in the gut, hard. "Fuck you!" she spat, free of his grasp. Her voice was hoarse from lack of air, but she didn't care. "Believe what you want, Zaine. I'm done with you," she snapped.

Lily turned with the goal only to find Tucker, still trying to take advantage of the surprise she'd given Zaine. She didn't get but a few steps before Zaine hit her like a freight train, right in the back, literally smearing her on the ground face-first and bloodying her up in the process. There was no grace in this fight, no precision - he was aiming to beat the living shit out of her. Lily couldn't get out from underneath him, not until other hunters on scene tried to break up the fight.

Speaking of other hunters, a few of them reached in to try and pull them apart - not until Chase yelled for them to get back at the top of her lungs. Whatever she'd seen, it must have been nasty, and as they yanked their hands away from the fray and seemed to momentarily give up on trying to pry them off of eachother, the thing Chase saw manifested itself. It happened so quickly that nobody was really sure it had happened at all, not until Zaine jumped away from Lily, whose eyes were wide as her mouth fell open. Her face and knuckles were bloody, but she still had some presence of mind, and her hand flew quickly to the base of her neck to cover something. It was like everything in their little corner had ground to a halt, and as she pulled her hand away from her neck, she only managed a confused, weak cry, her blue eyes conveying more horror and betrayal than even before (if that were fucking possible).

Zaine himself was worse for wear - Lily had been his prodigy, the crown jewel of his trainees. She had also been his biggest mistake where the Midnight situation was given, but only Zaine blamed himself for that. He had meant to kill her, he truly had meant to snap her neck, he didn't know why she made him so fucking angry, but what he'd just done was so much more shocking because it was personal somehow, intimate. "Lily - " he said, his voice cracking from the damage she'd done to his ribs.

"We need to get her back to the guild. We don't have long. He bit her right on the carotid," Chase said, speaking with haste. She closed her eyes for a second, then bent down to the hunter. "Lily, can you hear me?"

"What's happening?" Lily whined. The venom was already moving through her adrenaline-driven body, setting in and making her limbs feel heavy and clumsy. She felt hot and found it hard to breath; when she closed her eyes and reopened them, Chase was swaying. "Zaine? You bit me?"

"Out of my way, asshole," Quinn ordered, shoulder-checking Zaine as she pushed by him. "We'll have to get one of the vampires to move her. If we try to bring her, we risk her going into cardiac arrest before we ever get her there." She looked back at Zaine. "You'd better hope she lives," she said, and despite how calmly the statement was issued, there was no doubt that it was a serious threat. Quinn looked at Chase. "Help me lift her up," she said, appreciating the fact that the other hunter was trying to keep Lily calm as paralysis began to set in. This would be hard to watch, and it was even worse that Lily kept asking Zaine why he'd bitten her, for one, and two, asking if they'd seen Tucker. Quinn would have to get to the bottom of this as soon as Lily was back to normal.

Assuming Zaine didn't somehow sneak into the medical quarters and kill her in her sleep. She made a note to have a word with the esteemed guild leader about his dog's leash being tightened. Lily and Quinn had beaten the shit out of eachother, sure, but it was nothing personal. What Quinn had just seen was anything but business.

Tucker was absolutely right that Raphael would dip out to fight another day. He was having a great deal of fun, and honestly he hadn't been able to do this sort of work on a crowd in years. With the way he found manipulating individuals within the crowd independently to better add to the chaos, it was a wonder he hadn't already started the next world war somehow. It wasn't often that many got the privilege to see Ash Leone knocked off his game, but the Triste was getting overwhelmed in the madness - at least, for a while, and that pleased Raphael immensely. The idea of perfection out of several of the more legendary creatures never really sat well with him. Everyone had flaws; everyone had fears. He just needed to find them.

When Aidan finally had enough of the fuckery and started climbing the building, though, that was when Raphael was going to leave. For all of the flaws and fears he could locate, gargoyles were their own breed of troublesome, naturally immune to most things vampires had to offer. The supernatural world had a much more effective system of checks and balances on itself than it ever had against the normal realm; vampires were so grossly overpowered by the standards of a human, but in terms of their own realm, they were on the middle/lower end of the totem, especially when there were creatures much older and created for much different purposes.

Aidan only had to get to the ledge across from Raphael before the vampire had capped his fun for the night. "Nope," he said, pointing a finger at the ancient creature. "Not tonight." And with that, he was gone, taking the artificial panic he'd set over the crowd with him. Below, Serena, along with others, stopped going to tears with terror, and Ash's job suddenly became about a billion times easier - throwing out hella calming vibes to match the fear, and then suddenly the fear being gone? Yeah, he was probably still on high-power for a second, so that would have been fun to see.

No, it wasn't common to see Ash Leone knocked off his game, which the triste would give Raphael, but it also wasn't common that this level of insanity was upon him.  His place honestly hadn't taken a hit like this since the 1920s, and that had been a very different sort of reason and solution.  This was just outright madness, though Aidan finally leaving him alone and taking a more aggressive approach to their attackers helped a ton in relieving Ash of some of the fuckery going on.  He could concentrate better without the gargoyle in his face, and Aidan was what ultimately chased Raphael off.  The fact that a fireball hit the building above him and the ancient just jumped up past the crater probably didn't hurt his intimidation factor, but Ash was just disappointed that the gargoyle hadn't gotten his mark.

That Raphael disappeared and left a sudden void where the fear had been was another issue entirely, which meant that, for just a minute or so there, Ash zenned the crowd out so badly that it all got very quiet, very quickly.  Then, realizing what had happened, he eased his influence down, just in time for Chase to shout his name in the quieter air.  He snapped his head in her direction to find Lily down, Quinn staring at Zaine like she might set him on fire with her eyes, and the Seer silently begging him to get over there.

"Ash, we need a vampire to get her to the guildhouse, but she might not make it that far."

He reached out wordlessly for her, trying to get a feel for what had happened, and was surprised by the sharp bite of...poison?  He glanced up towards Zaine, eyes narrowing, but there was no time.  "I don't think I can heal her completely, chere, but I'll give her time.  Someone find that vampire," he instructed, not so certain he wanted to remove Chase from Lily's side when the woman was helping to keep her calm.  He shushed her softly, drawing himself back up for another long haul, and got to work.

Poison.  What the hell was that man thinking?  Mamba poison, no less, which would wreak havoc extremely quickly even in a shifter.  Chase was on the right path, calming her down so that her heart wouldn't beat the poison through her any faster, and he tried to ease her panic down, but neutralizing the poison was the important part.  After his battle of wills with Raphael, no less.  At least Connor, Stavros and the other arriving hunters were taking control of the situation quickly, and Danielle was out there somewhere, so if Ash needed her, he'd have the help.  Since he was now pumping energy that he didn't necessarily have to spare into a body fighting off some of the worst poison the animal kingdom had to offer, needing her assistance was likely. 

Lily would live, though.

Anyone with even the slightest concept of who and what Aidan was wouldn't have been surprised that Raphael noped out of that one, but Aidan shot him a fangy grin anyway, all malicious intent.  "Soon," he shot back, aware that the coward would escape before he could get a claw on him, but he had his face, his scent and his metaphysical 'feel'.  Someone would know who he was, and then, they'd have a 'chat'.  Nobody fucked with Aoife, or Serena.  As clan elder, he'd defend Ray's mate just as surely as his own; the fact that Aoife cared for Serena the way she did really didn't hurt.

With the threat chased off, he hopped down from the building to return to the women, hopefully in better shape than he'd left them.

Aoife and Serena would be fine, shaken up though they were, so other than checking in with his cousin to make sure she was alright, Connor kept his sweep up, trying to figure out who was injured, how badly, and if they were going to need help getting them either to a hospital or one of the guildhouses.  He saw the commotion between Zaine and Lily, but not from close enough that he really made out what was happening through the crowd of people.  Chase was there, and he trusted her to have it under control, at least until he heard her shout for Leone.  Not a good sign.

"What the hell happened?" he demanded when he pushed through the crowd around Lily, shooting a look around the circle.  Quinn was staring very pointedly at Zaine, who looked surprisingly calm and...not really there, actually.  If Connor were to guess, he'd have said he looked like he was in shock, and yeah, he was bloodied, but not the way Lily was.  Casey was on the phone with someone, and he thought he heard her tell 'Alex' to hurry, which probably meant Darling was on the way, and Leone was kneeling beside Lily with Chase.  Casey hung up and looked like she might answer him, but Alexander suddenly stepped seemingly out of nowhere from the crowd, sizing them all up the way Connor had when he first walked up.

"Asshole over there bit her," Quinn snapped, and Casey glanced at her, then nodded like she couldn't have said it better.  Both Connor and Alexander looked to Zaine, though there thoughts went different places. 

"Take her to Crimson, Victor's there and he should have an anti-venom," he instructed the vampire (he still needed better details on that, since he was pretty sure the story he got was that Alexander got so drunk he remembered being a vampire and suddenly was one, and that made zero sense), who nodded and knelt with the other two to wait for Leone to finish whatever he was doing to help.  "Everyone else, spread out, help make sure people don't need help, make sure the threat's completely gone."

"All due respect, I'd like to go with Lily," Quinn said, eye contact unwavering, and Connor nodded.  If Zaine had lost it badly enough to bite her, he couldn't fault the other blonde insisting on staying with her friend.  "Go ahead."

"Take her.  I've slowed it down and reversed what it's already done.  Once she gets the anti-venom and has time to rest, she'll recover," Ash offered, pushing himself to his feet and rolling his shoulders like he was tired, which Connor wouldn't have faulted him for.  Alexander nodded once more, glancing to Chase to see if she was going with, and then lifting Lily as carefully as he could with instructions to Quinn to put a hand on his shoulder.  The three of them disappeared, Chase practically attached to her brother at the hip as she filled him in on the full details, including Zaine accusing Lily of the attack, Lily saying she'd seen Tucker, and Zaine's attack on the woman.  Connor, unsurprisingly, was interested in all of it, as would be Stavros and Sean as soon as it calmed down enough to share that bit with them, which he intended to do.

Alexander, on the other hand, didn't need to ask the Seer what had happened, since he had the source right there in his arms.  He brought her immediately to Crimson and their infirmary as he'd been asked, but he also pulled the information he wanted from her mind; he retained some of his more human qualities because humanity was stubborn, but he was practical in the end.  This was the most efficient way of getting what he needed from her, especially in her condition. 

"This looks promising, what happened?" Victor asked, standing up as soon as he saw them, looking to Alexander. 

"Zaine bit her, Leone did some work on the poison and the damage it caused, but his place was just attacked, so he just took the edge off," he explained.  "Quinn has orders from your guild leader to stay with her."

Just hearing that it was Zaine's poison kicked the surgeon into high gear with a short curse, whether Leone had done anything to help, or not.  Mamba poison was no joke.  "Are there other injuries incoming?"

"It looked like there would be, but I understand Leone has a healer and was holding back with Lily so that he could help with healing.  You may luck out."

"Thanks."

With no more than a nod and a squeeze on Quinn's shoulder, Alexander stepped out of the infirmary for a quiet place to make his phone call.  "Dev?  You were right, Zaine slipped.  Lily's at Crimson, Quinn is with her."